Minnesota Timberwolves: Derrick Rose (mostly) sides with Jimmy Butler

The Minnesota Timberwolves have a decision to make on Derrick Rose in free agency. In the meantime, Rose’s book tells his side of the Jimmy Butler story.

Following his resurgent season with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Derrick Rose is an unrestricted free agent this summer.

He also has a book that’s coming out soon, and the advanced copies sent to the media are causing a bit of a stir.

Rose only played a season and a handful of additional games with the Wolves, and that’s reflected in the book; only about 15 pages in the 200-plus page book are about his stint in Minnesota, according to the Star Tribune.

But Rose spent part of those 15 pages talking about Jimmy Buter, and in turn, why Butler was so cranky last fall and ultimately demanded to be traded. And if you believed the rumblings in the media about Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, well … you would have been correct to do so.

Not for any salacious or surprising reasons, either, but for one reason alone: plain, old-fashioned jealousy.

Indeed, Butler was apparently not a fan of Wiggins and Towns earning max contracts “before they achieve something”, according to the excerpt at the above-linked Star Tribune article. Never mind that Towns was an All-Star and hadn’t yet received his contract extension when the trade demand was made, but apparently Towns was the only young player mentioned by name in the book.

Rose also acknowledges that Towns is “cool” and “good”, and that Butler’s approach was wrong.

However, comments led Joseph Zucker of Bleacher Report to surmise that Rose is “unlikely” to return to Minnesota this summer, although the following excerpt pulled by the Star Tribune makes it sound like Rose backed down on his attacks on young players, leaving the door open for a return to the Wolves.

"“I want to play a few more years. It’s crazy to think I’m already at 10 years with everything that’s happened — way more than most guys get to play. I’ve been blessed. It feels right again. If the biggest problem in Minnesota is dealing with kids, I’m cool with that. That’s something that’s fixable,” he writes, before adds in more colorful language that they just need to grow up and that he’ll call them out when they get out of line."

Then again, it would be a mild surprise if the new Timberwolves regime, led by at least a pair of analytics-driven executives in president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas and executive vice president of basketball operations Sachin Gupta, would choose to bring back Rose, who doesn’t exactly play a modern brand of guard.

Of course, Rose was objectively good last year — even the numbers bear that out. Rose still has value as an NBA player, but only in short stretches and you have to be okay with streaky jump-shooting and a minimum of 15-20 missed games over the course of the season.

Although the combination of his continual nagging injuries, style of play, comments in his book about his young teammates, and any other moves the Wolves may potentially make this summer, it’s probably unlikely that he ends up back in a Timberwolves uniform.

It’ll be intriguing to see what Rose’s market is this offseason — and whether or not his new book will have any effect on what franchises might be willing to add him to the fold.